PoT: pedantic
seasonal arc, part 3. Notice these are out of order. Oh woe.
Fall means that he walks you home everyday because tennis is over.
But home is a relative concept for him, your home or his home; that's the way it is with him with all words. Definitions tend to bring him down, like headaches or too much cold medicine. He likes words without meaning, likes blank whole empty things, so he likes you, a lot. He says you're a page no one's written on yet, and he's going to be the first to scribble all over your margins.
You tell him his face is a page your fist hasn't written on yet, either, and when you do it won't be scribbling, and then he laughs. You get the feeling that maybe the only reason he's here is to change you, and a long time ago you had admitted to yourself that the things you were afraid of the most were things that were determined to change you, determined to make you into something you had never planned on being. The fact is you're probably just afraid of change of any kind, gradual change or revolutionary change, the imperialistic change of authority figures or the soft, harmless changes wrought by him.
Here it is, your worst fear, and you're going to cafes with him after school. Summer is over, and so is tennis, and you're pretty sure it's fall because it isn't any other season you can think of, not cold enough for winter, but he's still smiling, and you could--but you don't-- hate him for that. There's nothing to hate him for.
He hits on the waitress a couple of times with lines you've heard by now, smooth practiced lines that sound like he learned them from a book, but everytime they leave the girls blushing. He's the only one who ever orders anything. You just smoke if they let you, smoke if they don't let you, and occasionally drain the glass of water they bring with his drinks because the way he chatters on and on without stopping makes you thirsty.
But you tip better than he does, even though you don't order anything.
"I've never been to Yuuki-chan's cafe," he tells you, stirring a sickeningly huge sundae of vanilla ice cream and fudge together. You eye it as if any moment he was going to force you to try some, because he has before, and the vanilla had been smooth but the fudge caught you wrong. The word "Yuuki-chan" makes you think of girls with pink ribbons in their hair and cute socks until you realize he's talking about your mother.
Unforgivable, surely. "If you do, I'll kill you," you say, and he watches you curiously before he shoves a spoonful of ice cream into his mouth and declares, words sticky, "You're the only person I know who can blink like that."
"Like what?"
Jumbled in there with the vanilla and the fudge, "Dangerously."
This is fall. The weather isn't cold and isn't warm either, so he likes fall just like he likes you (a lot), because he can't define either one of you. Your hair is still pale, bleached like it was summer and you were on the beach kicking over his sandcastles and buying him snow cones, and his hair is the same color of the leaves, a color for all seasons. He tells you that love is in the grave this year, that deciduous trees will be the death of you, and that you'll never live to see 32 because your complexion tells him that you have high blood pressure and a weak liver, so you should avoid alcohol. This is fall; he's lost his sense of complacency; everything is equivalent to something dying or ending, and the sun is timid like his anger.
"Jin--" he says, and you growl, "It's Akutsu."
"Jin--"
"Sengoku--"
"Kiyosumi," he says, emphasizing each syllable with a tap on the back of your hand. "Now that we know each other's names..."
"Kiyo--Sengoku, you absolute pain in the ass--"
Says to you, "Well?", since both of you are in front of your house, waiting for either one of you to move, and then you wonder how it happens. He has one hand reaching up for the back of your head and then you're kissing him. The sides of his mouth are sticky and taste vaguely of vanilla. But something deeper, you're reaching for something you can't describe, he leans back and says, "Well?" again, like he's waiting for a response, but you just kiss him again.
Paprika.
Yuuki is at the door. She says, "You're such a nice boy, walking Jin home like this," like you were some seven year old girl who needed to be protected or something, when it's you who looks like you're babysitting. You're taking off your shoes already when he says, "Oh, it's nothing, your house is only a little out of the way, anyway."
No, you think. You've walked to his house before, it's in the other direction. But when you're turning around to say something, even though you're not sure what, he's already left, and Yuuki is standing with her arms crossed and asking you, "Why didn't you tell Sengoku-kun goodbye?"
"You were talking to him."
"He's your friend." You want to say, you're the one he's infatuated over, but then it's paprika in your mouth and vanilla and the feel of his hair in your hands like wounds, so you don't say anything.
The next time he kisses you, he pulls you around the corner of the road, behind a tree, because his most recent girlfriend is waiting for him somewhere around the bend, and you ask him, "Who's that?" like you don't know, and he says, "Jin, Jin, Jin," like a mantra, tilts your head down and his head up so your mouths meet somewhere in between.
He feeds you his bubblegum into your mouth with the tip of his tongue and is gone before you can catch him.
Fall means that he walks you home everyday because tennis is over.
But home is a relative concept for him, your home or his home; that's the way it is with him with all words. Definitions tend to bring him down, like headaches or too much cold medicine. He likes words without meaning, likes blank whole empty things, so he likes you, a lot. He says you're a page no one's written on yet, and he's going to be the first to scribble all over your margins.
You tell him his face is a page your fist hasn't written on yet, either, and when you do it won't be scribbling, and then he laughs. You get the feeling that maybe the only reason he's here is to change you, and a long time ago you had admitted to yourself that the things you were afraid of the most were things that were determined to change you, determined to make you into something you had never planned on being. The fact is you're probably just afraid of change of any kind, gradual change or revolutionary change, the imperialistic change of authority figures or the soft, harmless changes wrought by him.
Here it is, your worst fear, and you're going to cafes with him after school. Summer is over, and so is tennis, and you're pretty sure it's fall because it isn't any other season you can think of, not cold enough for winter, but he's still smiling, and you could--but you don't-- hate him for that. There's nothing to hate him for.
He hits on the waitress a couple of times with lines you've heard by now, smooth practiced lines that sound like he learned them from a book, but everytime they leave the girls blushing. He's the only one who ever orders anything. You just smoke if they let you, smoke if they don't let you, and occasionally drain the glass of water they bring with his drinks because the way he chatters on and on without stopping makes you thirsty.
But you tip better than he does, even though you don't order anything.
"I've never been to Yuuki-chan's cafe," he tells you, stirring a sickeningly huge sundae of vanilla ice cream and fudge together. You eye it as if any moment he was going to force you to try some, because he has before, and the vanilla had been smooth but the fudge caught you wrong. The word "Yuuki-chan" makes you think of girls with pink ribbons in their hair and cute socks until you realize he's talking about your mother.
Unforgivable, surely. "If you do, I'll kill you," you say, and he watches you curiously before he shoves a spoonful of ice cream into his mouth and declares, words sticky, "You're the only person I know who can blink like that."
"Like what?"
Jumbled in there with the vanilla and the fudge, "Dangerously."
This is fall. The weather isn't cold and isn't warm either, so he likes fall just like he likes you (a lot), because he can't define either one of you. Your hair is still pale, bleached like it was summer and you were on the beach kicking over his sandcastles and buying him snow cones, and his hair is the same color of the leaves, a color for all seasons. He tells you that love is in the grave this year, that deciduous trees will be the death of you, and that you'll never live to see 32 because your complexion tells him that you have high blood pressure and a weak liver, so you should avoid alcohol. This is fall; he's lost his sense of complacency; everything is equivalent to something dying or ending, and the sun is timid like his anger.
"Jin--" he says, and you growl, "It's Akutsu."
"Jin--"
"Sengoku--"
"Kiyosumi," he says, emphasizing each syllable with a tap on the back of your hand. "Now that we know each other's names..."
"Kiyo--Sengoku, you absolute pain in the ass--"
Says to you, "Well?", since both of you are in front of your house, waiting for either one of you to move, and then you wonder how it happens. He has one hand reaching up for the back of your head and then you're kissing him. The sides of his mouth are sticky and taste vaguely of vanilla. But something deeper, you're reaching for something you can't describe, he leans back and says, "Well?" again, like he's waiting for a response, but you just kiss him again.
Paprika.
Yuuki is at the door. She says, "You're such a nice boy, walking Jin home like this," like you were some seven year old girl who needed to be protected or something, when it's you who looks like you're babysitting. You're taking off your shoes already when he says, "Oh, it's nothing, your house is only a little out of the way, anyway."
No, you think. You've walked to his house before, it's in the other direction. But when you're turning around to say something, even though you're not sure what, he's already left, and Yuuki is standing with her arms crossed and asking you, "Why didn't you tell Sengoku-kun goodbye?"
"You were talking to him."
"He's your friend." You want to say, you're the one he's infatuated over, but then it's paprika in your mouth and vanilla and the feel of his hair in your hands like wounds, so you don't say anything.
The next time he kisses you, he pulls you around the corner of the road, behind a tree, because his most recent girlfriend is waiting for him somewhere around the bend, and you ask him, "Who's that?" like you don't know, and he says, "Jin, Jin, Jin," like a mantra, tilts your head down and his head up so your mouths meet somewhere in between.
He feeds you his bubblegum into your mouth with the tip of his tongue and is gone before you can catch him.